NBC Universal:
Mr. Robot Global Rants + Pre-Linear

To promote the Season 2 premiere of USA Network’s hit show, Mr. Robot, NBCUniversal and ISL created a robust pre-linear campaign which shattered the expectations of traditional TV marketing. Our mission was to incite a digital frenzy and ignite mass awareness in anticipation for the July 13th linear premiere by producing a revolutionary, international campaign, the likes of which the world had never seen.

On July 7th, we utilized Mr. Robot’s tone of voice and aesthetics to “hack” the Mr. Robot Facebook page for over 24 hours by broadcasting 11 customized ”global rants” via Facebook Live. Using paid promotion, each live video was targeted to its local demographic, encouraging the global audience to participate in real time. Never before had a campaign leveraged the potential of Facebook Live on this scale, effectively creating globally targeted real-time video advertising for 11 countries. The stunt ultimately garnered 20 million impressions, 5 million video views, 260,000 likes, 57,000 comments, and 16,700 shares worldwide.

What fans didn’t realize was that there was an even larger reveal just around the corner. Three days later, fans were invited to a Facebook Live Q&A session with the entire cast at Story, a concept store in NYC. Fifteen minutes into the live Q&A, our enraptured audience and digital fan base was shocked when fsociety hacked the livestream to drop Part 1 of the Season 2 premiere. At the same time, a single tweet appeared from @whoismrrobot, announcing the limited time availability of the premiere across multiple social platforms: Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube, and usanetwork.com. Word spread quickly and our digital stunt ended up generating 15 million total impressions and over 750,000 video views in less than 3 hours.

Our collective efforts resulted in an astounding 10 million media impressions made, including features on NPR, The Tonight Show, Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, Variety and more. Social sentiment was trending positive with posts centering around excitement for the premiere, as well as acclaim for the unconventional release strategy. All this attention resulted in Mr. Robot trending on Facebook and Twitter for multiple days, and proving that there really are no rules in TV marketing.